Web Hosting

Web Hosting

There is no one 'type' of web hosting - the most popular are virtual hosting, dedicated, and colocated. Unless you have extremely demanding needs or have your own server, virtual hosting will suffice. Virtual hosting itself is synonymous with 'web hosting' - it just means that your site is hosted on a server with other sites.

The steps usually needed when getting a web host:

1. Select a Web Host - We have our own large directory of web hosts that you can look through to find a host.
2. Sign up - Once chosen, you must actually sign-up with the host you are going to use! Most hosts accept credit cards, and many also accept PayPal and check/money orders.
3. Change Nameservers - To make sure that people are actually going to your site, you must change the nameservers of your domain to that of the web host you signed up. This is done so that when someone enters yourdomain.com (yourdomain.com being whatever domain you have) they will end up at your site. This may take up to 72 hours to be fully functional.
4. Upload Your Site - Again, there are many ways to do this, but the most popular is FTP. To use FTP, you need an FTP client like Cute FTP or WS_FTP.
5. Sit Back, and Enjoy! - Your site is now online for everyone to see!

Of course once your site is online, you will have to market it so that others know that it exists. This in itself is a whole new topic - a good place to learn about this is at Webmaster World.